Life is coming!

For we know that if the earthly tent which is our house is torn down,
we have a building from God,
a house not made with hands,
eternal in the heavens.

For indeed in this house we groan,
longing to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven,
inasmuch as we, having put it on, will not be found naked.

For indeed while we are in this tent,
we groan, being burdened,
because we do not want to be unclothed
but to be clothed,
so that what is mortal will be swallowed up by life!

Now He who prepared us for this very purpose
is God,
who gave to us the Spirit as a pledge.


-2 Corinthians 5:1-5

Craving. . .

. . . No, not chocolate. Milton's Paradise Lost.

Counting off the weeks till the next library spree. . .

In honor of my friends

My fellow poetry club members are hosting a campus-wide event tonight! I can't be there, but I wanted to commemorate this milestone - with poetry of course.

It's hard to explain poetry. You have to feel it.


On first looking into Chapman's Homer

Much have I travelled in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star'd at the Pacific--and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise--
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

--John Keats

Firsts

Feel free to laugh at me! I'm always glad to bring joy to others. Anyway, I usually deserve it.
These are in no particular order.

Since December 16, for the first time ever, I. . .

-lit a match
-filled a gas tank
-did the grocery shopping
-drank green tea
-drank black tea
-mailed a package
-made lasagna
-set a mousetrap
-burned the trash
-caught my finger in a mousetrap
-caught a mouse
-shoveled snow
-smashed a china bowl
-spread salt on icy paths
-cooked a roast
-drove to Waverly
-stranded a vehicle
-had a vehicle jump-started
-heard Nolan pray
-had my hair styled
-bought a sci-fi book (not even under Ardith's compulsion)
-bought a soundtrack
-cleaned a freezer
-scrubbed out the kitchen sink
-sung tenor in its correct octave
-wore a ski cap to bed
-edited fake HTML code
-found a computer file that Jason couldn't
-verbally argued with Trevor
-sat in front of a flatscreen monitor
-cropped a photo in an image editor
-rubbed my hands in green alcohol
-set up a Christmas tree
-was high on acetaminophen
-called in pizza
-made salty fudge
-made good fudge
-was alone with the kids more than a week

Moral of the list: Sharon is hopefully a little closer to qualifying as an adult.

Bomb Threats, Explosives, and Rubber Bands

Guess we'll have to give up those rubber band wars.

Too bad. The kids had even designed Lego-launching RBGs.

Diese Verrückten Handys

During President Bush's visit to Europe,

The only disturbance to the summit occurred when Joschka Fisher's cellphone rang during the conversation. The [German] Chancellor sent a sharp look to his Vice Chancellor, who hastened to turn it off.

From Spiegel.


While we're in German, if anyone's interested, oberflächlich is superficial.

Wednesday's Headlines

We had a distinguished guest drop in for a visit this morning!

Your German for the day

Came across this word while reading, and it's been running back to my mindfront all day. I suppose it wants to get out and infect some other minds.

oberflächlich

I was going to post the definition, but what fun would that be? Why don't you figure it out! If you think it's fun to read, believe me, it's even more fun to say. If you say it right.

Hint: it's an adjective, one that I hope never describes me, or you, or any of us.

Latest Computer Geek

Some of you have heard of this little guy's computer, set up by Daddy the master computer assembler and upgrader.

Since my titles don't show up: he generally sits on a large computer, as shown in picture #2. In pictures #3 and #4, I think he was planning to change his preferences. . .

Trevor also likes to help wash dishes. He won't even have time to get sick of them, since we will have to get a dishwasher for better sanitation.

Trevor has also discovered that talking is a far more fun and interesting means of communication than grunting. He enunciates extremely well! Still working on getting to sentence level, but the littlest kid is finally starting to grow up.

Blue

Do you know what I love? Walking down a country road, no one in sight or sound, out where I can lean back and see nothing but sky. . . blue sky. . . the sun shining from one side, brilliantly pure white cirrus clouds streaking their way across the great blue circle of the heavens. Gazing into that deep blue is understanding how the color symbolizes God's holiness, as in the tabernacle. . . the great expanse separating God from us. Lovely, awesome, cold. Lovelier, warmer, more awesome still is the thought that God would transcend that blue expanse of holiness to reach us. Because we could not.

Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. Hebrews 4:14

Out of Context - February Edition

The Ides have rolled around again.

Jason: "What is it with girls. They're like, so weird."

Jason (demonstrating dino romance): "He goes, RRRR, OOPS! I chomped her head off!"

Ethan: "I'm not a little kid. I'm a growing boy."

Ethan: "It's pretty bad to be a person. You have to do dishes." . . . "But then, it's pretty bad to be a worm, 'cause you get squished."

Nolan (looking contemplatively at Sharon's purse): "I don't like your purse."
Sharon: "You don't like my purse? Why not?"
Nolan: "Because it looks gross."

Nolan: "I don't want to get out. I'm going to fire you."

Ethan: "What's the matter, Derek? What's so unplaced about it?"

Carolyn: "But I was just at an interesting part. The interestingest part!"

Melinda: "Better be careful, Derek, there's 210 milligrams of salt in each serving [of vegetable dip]."
Derek: "I don't have to worry about how much salt I eat."
Melinda: "Yes, but salt makes you thirsty, and being thirsty uses up more electricity for pumping the water. All around you could be saving, by just using a little less vegetable dip!"

Sharon: "Oh come on, life isn't so bad."
Ethan: "Oh yes it is. When you're still my age, it's still bad. Well. . . when you're my age. . ."

Derek (to Jason): "Hey! That's not fair. You can cheap out on your easy-street school."

Sharon: "Are you going to sleep well tonight, Nolan?"
Nolan: "No, I'm going to sleep well - bad."

Jason: "I just feel this need to drink juice in endless quantitites."

Kendra: "Girls have more genes than boys."
Jason: "I don't need jeans. I have plenty of shirts."

Jason: "Know how many arguments end in fistfights?"
Derek: "That's good, a little recreation at the end."

Trevor (playing on his new computer): "Eewps! . . . Ba-aa-ng!"

Trevor (running past his older sister): "Yii-ites. . . Yites! Yites! Yites!"

If you can figure out Trevor's last comment, congratulations. . . you are well on your way to winning an award in Linguistical Analysis of Toddler Language Verbalizations Transcribed to Text (generally known as LATLVTT, which acronym has provided a new area of research for a sub-committee of said award, namely, research into the most appropriately obscure vowel sounds to insert between the above consonants in order to make the pronunciation of said acronym impossible for the common layperson to deduce without the aid of previously mentioned committee).

Just a little fun

Ran across a couple cognados falsos in Spanish today.

If you want to say you're embarrassed, don't make it worse. Embarazada actually means that you're. . . well. . . with child. 'Embarrassed' in Spanish is apenado(a) or avergonzado(a).

So there really is some truth in living for weekends, vacations, retirement. . . have to wonder if the biblical Year of Jubilee had some connection with another generation retiring. . . Voy a jubilarme! I'm going to retire!

Yippee. Only forty-five years to go.

Not a disclaimer

This is a little late in coming.

If you can read Latin or have enough interest to go muddling around in a dictionary and the accompanying paradigms till you figure out that linguarum perita is the feminine form of 'linguist', let me just assure you that I'm not a linguist. I was forced into some interest in this field upon nearly stumbling headlong into the awful, sickening truth: no one can learn all the languages on earth. For me, linguistics is just an excuse to study any language without having to master it. Linguarum perita literally means 'girl skilled in languages', and parvissima is the superlative form of parvus, 'small', 'little', which could mean 'the littlest girl skilled in languages' or 'the girl rather least skilled in languages'. All that is just a roundabout way of saying that I love languages, and I realize my skill is little compared to many other people, or, if you prefer, I may be short.

I decided to skip out the 'Sites of the Month' feature because this entails the generally boring job of looking for stuff that may interest other people. Frankly, who cares? "Write about what you know," Mommy and Ardith used to tell me, and the same thing applies to links on blog sidebars. By the way, if you're trying to improve your comprehension of a language, do listen to foreign language radio. It helps.

Cheers!

Here's to my wonderful sister Ardith!

(Ardith, I didn't have any champagne, so I ate up the rest of the guacamole dip in your honor)

Question

Is linguistics the ultimate field of study? Does scientific interest evolve from physics to pharmacy to psychology?

I don't know... I have a hard time believing there isn't some bias involved in a view that holds letters so far above numbers. What does the author of this blurb mean by linguistics, anyway?

What do you think?

Visiting Ardith

McDonald's? Wendy's? Arby's? Applebee's? Pizza Hut? Perkins?

"We don't want grease, we just want slime."

See, this is the problem when twelve people in a fifteen-passenger van try to pick out a restaurant. You have two genuine adults, two classified adults, and at least three wanna-be's, plus the younger ones who have no inhibitions about spurting out their own opinions, not to mention the several who double as wise-crackers.

Having finally settled on Pizza Hut, we only had to wait about ten minutes for them to find us three tables in a corner. In the very cornerest of these corners Ardith went through the Family Interrogation which naturally follows the Business Interview. This one, being conducted over pizza and Sprite, was probably less stressful. This one, being conducted by Daddy, was probably at least as thorough as the Interview, though on different points.

If twelve people choosing a restaurant is interesting, twelve people arguing over directions back to Ardith's suite is even more so, and this time without bringing in the stereotypical gender differences of How Guys and Girls React to Being Lost. Not that we were lost.

We left Ardith happily surfing the Sci-Fi channel on one of the two TVs in her hotel suite. Now I'd better stop before I say something somebody will make me regret.

But it was very good to be all together!

Tomorrow

Tomorrow, Lord willing, Daddy and Mommy will finally be back home, to stay.

I had decent-sized plans for getting the house ready, but it looks like we're going with the essentials. Jason and I have both been sick this weekend, a strange cold that brought headaches and coughing and stomach upset and some feverishness and dizziness along with it. Better to leave the important point unobscured - just being together again!

That may even be all together, as Ardith has plans to stop by between interviews with Rockwell Collins this weekend.

Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good;
For His lovingkindness is everlasting.

Psalm 118:1
(among many others)